Tom Blake detested what he was about
to do. He detested the way he
must look in the ludicrous costume that replaced his own, his own fabled
costume fashioned from the mystic fabric of Ka that imbued its wearer with
the nine lives of a cat! In
place of that worthy garment, he wore this horrid mockery of a batsuit.
The Catman masquerading as a bat, what degradation! And yet he felt
compelled to continue. He owed
Hugo Strange a debt he could never properly repay; he had no right to refuse
any simple request.

Not that putting on this absurd
mockery of his own splendid costume was in any way simple.
The base jumpsuit was clearly meant for a different bodytype, one
wider in the waist and belly and smaller in the arms and chest.
The thick lycra pulled and tugged in all the wrong places.
Then began the humiliating tying on of rubber chaps and a latex
chestpiece—the latter also too small, which led to further
humiliation with Hugo taping it into place behind his back so the
bat-emblem wouldn’t “ruffle up” when he moved.
Hugo swore the cape hid the embarrassing duct tape crisscrossed all
over his back, but Blake found it difficult to trust a man that could offer
him his choice of black rubber or yellow canvas utility belt.

Yes, Tom Blake found it difficult to
trust Hugo Strange, and yet he found himself going along with the whole
ridiculous plan in so far as Strange bothered to explain it to him.

He checked his watch.
Soon it would be time to begin phase 2:
Now that so many criminals escaped Batman with ease, his standing
with the police must suffer.
The general public would not know of his failures, they still held him in
esteem. Tonight, that would
change. Tonight, “Batman” would begin committing crimes himself, and
it would all become clear to them: how his crimefighting of the past was
merely a ruse, a way to ingratiate himself with the police and, at the same
time, eliminate the competition.
Now that Batman’s true nature was exposed, he would have no
recourse. His denials that the
criminal Bat was an imposter would ring hollow indeed.
With any criminal able to escape him with a word—how would he explain
that to the police? They
would know a payoff when they saw it…

It did not sit right with Tom Blake.
Catman’s battles with the Batman were always that of hunter and prey,
the natural contest between predators.
This whole scheme seemed vaguely… deviant to him.
But he could not bring himself to refuse Hugo; he owed the good
doctor too much.

Catwoman waited impatiently on the
roof of the Gotham Museum of Modern Art.
She hadn’t been idle.
She had painstakingly mapped out the museum’s new security layout, tested
out two routes into the building, and thought through various possibilities
for reaching the gallery that held the coveted Van Gogh.
She was just considering if Victor Frieze might equip her with a
better means for evading the heat sensors than the cooling suits that were
commercially available, when she heard the telltale whuish-p of cape
in the high winds above the city.

“Evening, Handsome,” she purred without turning towards the noise.

“What was so urgent that it couldn’t
wait ‘til I got home?” Batman graveled.

“It’s not urgent that way; I just didn’t want to have this conversation
in our bedroom.”

He didn’t like the sound of that. Subconsciously, he scanned the roof for any clues as to what
might be coming.

“So did you have a good pummel?” Catwoman asked, her voice rich with
amusement.

“I raided the spa. Hugo and his…
women are out of circulation for a while.”

“Hugo Strange with henchwenches, that is just so wrong.”

“Most of them were unwitting dupes,”
Batman growled, “but the one they called Mau, that tried to drug Bruce
Wayne, was an active accomplice.”

Catwoman hissed quietly, but then broke into a naughty grin as Batman
continued:

“After the spa, I went to the Iceberg next,” he said. “And Penguin—”

“Had a near-death experience?” she interrupted, more amused than before.

Batman answered with the briefest
lip-twitch, then concluded the rundown with the words: “Caught up with three
of the seven I let escape earlier to maintain the charade.
Robin and Batgirl already found a fourth.
It’s too late to go on with it tonight; I’ll collect the others
tomorrow.”

Catwoman nodded and emitted a second
quietly menacing hiss. Then her
features underwent one of those startling shifts that indicate a cat is
ready for an abrupt change of subject.

“Do you know what it is, a Flehmen Reaction?” she asked casually.

“Animal research term, psycho-physiology. What cats do when they
catch a scent: head goes back, nostrils flare, mouth opens to expose as many
olfactory sensors as possible to the odor… Your point?”

“It’s a response to prey—to other
scents too, but mostly to prey—and it’s savoring…” She closed her
eyes on the word and pronounced it like the sweetest of sins, “nostrils
flaring, deep inhalation, mouth tips open… tasting it, letting the
full scent fill your palate…” She breathed in, her eyes still closed
dreamily, and she purred on the luxurious exhale.
Then her eyes popped open and met Batman’s with sad defiance.
“It’s what I’ve been doing since Oswald told me… I held the scent,
let it fill my nostrils, and savored the idea, the possibilities…”

“Possibilities?” Batman growled, and
Selina wondered if he really didn’t know what she meant or if he was
pressing to make her say it.

“Well there is that Van Gogh
downstairs,” she obliged. “A
twelve-carat ruby scheduled to make an appearance at the party.
And Cartier has a rather stunning pink sapphire.” She paused,
but he said nothing so she continued.
“So I held the scent, tasted it, maximum exposure on the palate…
Part of me… really wanted it to work.”

In place of the indignant outrage any
crimefighter should feel at such a statement, Batman felt only disbelief.

“Why?
So you could steal a painting that doesn’t belong to you?”

“I wanted to have the option, yes.”

“You miss it that much?”

“What do you think?
It was fun and exciting and I was good at it. And it was against all the rules and that made me feel wild
and free and alive. You want me
to say I don’t miss that?”

“What I want doesn’t seem to be the point,” he graveled.

“Why should it be, you got
everything you wanted,” she spat bitterly.
“I’m like a master violinist in a room of pianos. I can make
music now and then, but… it’s not my music.
It’s not me.”

“And the only way to be ‘you’ is to go
back to stealing? What is this, Selina? What’s really going on
here, because it isn’t that.
What are you looking for? What
is it that you really want?”

“I don’t know.”

Batman stiffened.
The instinct of a thousand confrontations snapped into place.
He didn’t believe a word of what he was hearing.
She wasn’t lying, not exactly, but whatever it was she was after, it
wasn’t the Van Gogh. He would
bear down as he always had until he found out what it was, answering evasion
with insistence, and silent stare with silent stare…

“Yes, you do,” he insisted.

“…”

“…”

Until finally…

“No point in wanting that,” she
murmured softly. “It’s not going to happen, right? That’s for other
people.”

The Planet Gotham Restaurant in the
heart of Times Square was a perfect target to launch the faux Batman’s crime
spree. As a tourist trap, it
was sure to be filled with diners toting camcorders, and there was a
resident photographer snapping pictures of families at their tables.
Tom Blake could be certain the crime would be well documented.
He need only wave his grapnel gun sufficiently to terrify the
sniveling tourists, and then collect enough of their valuables for the
robbery to constitute a felony. It was a very simple plan.

The Living Hell began when he tried
entering through a third story window above the main dining room, and his
wretched cape (so inferior to the fabled fabric of Ka) became caught on a
splintered piece of cornice. As
he tried to disentangle himself—without risking any move that might dislodge
the cape and reveal the duct tape holding his batsuit together—his antics
were noticed by the crowd below.
There was a good deal of pointing and laughter, and there were many
cameras pointed in his direction. Unfortunately, while the photos
might well be as damaging to Batman’s reputation as those Blake had intended
to be taken, no one in the crowd seemed to believe the figure on the third
floor of the Planet Gotham building (with his cape snagged on the second
floor cornice) was the real Batman.

It worked. Catwoman had caved. Finally, the truth was coming out:

“No point wanting that; it’s not going
to happen. That’s… for other
people, right?”

Finally the truth was coming out, but
(“for other people?” What was
she saying?) it wasn’t a truth Batman was expecting.

“…”

It seemed, on the contrary, to be a truth he hadn’t even been
considering.

“…”

And it was entirely possible that she
had misread his bat-stare.

“…”

It seemed increasingly probable
that she had misread the bat-stare.

“…”

Completely misread it.

“…”

A stare he directed at her to make her speak, to get her to realize and
admit—to herself as much as to him—that whatever was missing from her life,
whatever need she was trying to fill, it had nothing to do with those swirls
of paint inside the museum.

“…”

That crisis seemed to have passed; they were no longer talking about
Catwoman resuming her criminal activities.

“…”

What they were talking
about—and here, Bruce had to caution himself, because he could not be
certain what that was, exactly. The evidence was sketchy at best.
A single reference to the “that” which Selina wanted being “for
other people” did not conclusively prove that they were talking about…

“No point wanting that; it’s not going
to happen. That’s for other
people, right?”

…marriage.

No point wanting that.It’s not
going to happen. That’s for other
people,Right?

“But you still want it,” he said carefully.

The pause that followed seemed to go on for minutes, but lasted, at most,
a few seconds… It was a strangely nostalgic pause, filled with desires that
couldn’t be spoken. Desire that was sensed anyway, whether spoken
aloud or not. Desire that was sensed but denied and ignored, because
to admit it revealed vulnerability. It invited rejection and gave the
other power.

“No,” Catwoman said lightly, “Not
really. It’s like the Van Gogh.
I don’t want it exactly, I just wanted to…”

“To get the scent in your nostrils,” he prompted hurriedly.

“Yes, yes exactly. Just get a good whiff, see what it would… feel
like.”

The brave effort on both their parts sank back into strained silence.

Tom Blake freed himself, at last, from
the façade of the Planet Gotham restaurant.
He could master the bat-grapnel sufficiently to swing himself to the
alley behind the building where he hid behind a dumpster until the crowd out
front dissipated. Then he
renewed his assault on the Planet Gotham building by entering the usual way,
through the street level front door.

The lobby was filled with video and
novelty games, and a jet of air from one of these blew up his cape,
momentarily flashing his back full of duct tape to anyone that happened to
be walking behind him. He
ignored the guffaws and found his way to the escalator leading to the main
dining room.

“Oh, wow. Look at you,” a lusty
voice croaked behind him.

Blake turned to see a strangely
costumed “shooter girl” eying him the way a hungry lion eyes gazelle.
She wore a bikini top, miniskirt, and cowboy hat, all in hot pink
leather. Twin holsters of what appeared to be vodka lime and vodka
cherry were strapped to each hip. And crisscrossed over her chest,
like bandoliers in the old Westerns, she had two straps of shot glasses
instead of bullets. Although he
had never seen such a specimen before, Blake recognized this creature as a
“shooter girl” because the words were emblazoned in red across the band of
her cowboy hat. Blake smiled
weakly, forgetting in the face of such a rapacious predator that he was,
himself, there as a hunter.

“How about a shot before you head in
to work, ‘Batman,’” his tormentor cooed, whipping out a glass with one hand
and a bottle in the other. Then
she arched her back, slid the glass into place in the latch of her bikini
top, and deftly filled it with vodka lime.

“I, um,” Blake faltered, taking an
involuntary step backwards—smack into another woman who didn’t seem quite
so predatory, if only because she was wearing a yellow sundress instead of a
hot pink bikini.

“Would you take our picture,” the new girl asked sweetly, waving her
camera at him.

An elaborate, multi-layered assault on
everything Batman AND Bruce Wayne held dear, stripping him of his stature,
his sanity, his livelihood, and finally, his life.
It was a plan truly worthy of Dr. Hugo Strange, and the first phase
was proceeding without a hitch—until this unfortunate setback with the
password malfunctioning, which landed him in bed number four of the Arkham
infirmary.

Through a haze of Haloperidol and
Vicodin, Hugo outlined for himself how he could direct phases two through
seventeen of his great plan from bed number four.
Phase six would be especially difficult, since Dr. Bartholomew was
unlikely to sanction a fieldtrip to the Bristol Polo Club and Bruce Wayne
was unlikely to attend a tailgate at the Arkham parking lot.

If he did somehow make it to phase
nine, faking his own death, there were certain advantages to his present
location. He could be murdered
by Batman’s greatest foe, the Joker, forcing the Bat on a vengeance rampage…

Although the clarity that comes of a Haloperidol-Vicodin injection on top
of a concussion did enable him to foresee a likely response: “HAHAHAHAHAAAA!
Yeah right, Hugly. I’ve got a better plan, how about I just kill you for
real, right here, right now!”

Better surely to stage his murder at the hands of Batman’s greatest foe,
Killer Croc…

“You want Croc hit Hugo in head with
big rock? Okay.”

Er, the Batman’s greatest foe, The Riddler…

“I’m sorry, Hugo, were you speaking to me?!”

Struck down on the very brink
of his rehabilitation by Batman’s greatest foe, Mad Hatter…

“Uh, sure Hugo… as long as you can do for me what you did for Blake! I
wanna be a studly hunka-hunka too!”

It only got worse when Bat-Blake made
his way into the dining room, where adults and children alike assumed he was
a hired entertainer working for the restaurant.
One woman would take his picture while her children pawed his utility
belt. Her husband asked if he could get a baked potato instead of
fries with that cheeseburger. And every time Blake spied the shooter
girl, she made eye contact, licked her lips, ran a fingertip over the lip of
the vodka bottle, and blew him a kiss.

He fled.

Outside the restaurant, he mopped the
sweat from his brow. It involved stuffing the end of the cape
underneath the cowl, again revealing the duct tape, but he was past caring
about that.

He decided it would be enough for
Batman to rob a taxicab at gunpoint.
It was Times Square. There would be plenty of witnesses, a
sufficiently public disgrace for the great crimefighter.
He would hail a cab, threaten the driver with the grapnel gun and
take his cash, then he would pull the man from the car, take the wheel
himself, and drive himself home—never to set foot in Times Square again if
he lived the rest of his days in Gotham City.

Catwoman left the Jaguar she’d driven
into the city in the little car park near her old apartment.
She rode home in the Batmobile with Batman. Not a word was spoken until they passed the “Catworthy”
billboard, then the tense silence seemed to crescendo, and the mood in the
car shifted.

“There was a time,” Bruce graveled quietly, “Dick and Barbara’s wedding,
you couldn’t stand the thought of it.”

Selina chuckled, remembering. “Yeah, well, there was a time I’d have my claws on that Van
Gogh by now, too. Can’t go home
again.”

“Two full bottles of Tattinger ‘96, Kitten.”

“I was thinking a little cat-scratch on the nameplate during the gala,
just to remind you in case you’d forgotten.”

“You, Lois, Dinah, and Quinn
empty six bottles of champagne between you, because of Gladys
Ashton-Larraby.”

“Even back then, I knew you’d be
there, somewhere, at the gala.
We might run into each other at the buffet, reaching for the same crab
puff.”

“Two little words from a society gossip and you’re off binge-drinking
with Harley Quinn!”

“The real party wouldn’t start until
after the guests left. Gallery
goes dark, little green light of the security system flicks on, then it’d be
just you and me, Stud.”

“Selina… what are you doing? What are you talking about? I’m talking about two years ago when you had a
meltdown because the words ‘Mrs. Wayne’ were uttered and they meant you.
Two minutes ago, you said that’s what you wanted. You wouldn’t
use the word, but you got the message through. Now you’re back on that
Van Gogh? Selina, what’s going on with you? And leave the museums and jewelry stores out of it, they have
been for two years, four months and eleven days.”

“No, that’s not true, not really. It was never about the paintings or the jewels. It
wasn’t just the prize and it wasn’t just the thrills.
It was… I don’t even know how to put this. It was getting back
a little piece of what I’d lost. The luxuries somehow touched that old
feeling of safety and love and home.”

“There’s nothing like that I can’t
give you,” Bruce pointed out. “For that matter, Selina, you were set after
the first Monet. Why keep going
if it was just the money?”

“It was never enough.”

He grunted lightly, eyes glued to the road, as if looking at her would
cause his entire universe to collapse.

“It didn’t matter how much you stole, you would never bring them back.”

“Something like that,” Selina
whispered, uncomfortable with the words he chose even more than the
conversation itself and the reality it suggested.
She took a deep breath, then spoke the thought.
“Bruce, you’re not going like this observation, but we’re not that
different. Why do you go back
out each night, hm? Life stole
what I had, so I steal back. ‘Criminals’ violently ripped your life
away, so you violently rip back. If it really filled the void,
couldn’t you have walked away even about two thousand alleys ago?”

“Walked… away… even?”

“Impossible concept, right?
That’s all I’m saying.”

He shook his head, finding it
impossible to reconcile the differences between their choices with the same
root cause: the life of protecting the innocent versus the life of
preying on them.

Once she realized he wasn’t going to respond any time soon, she
continued.

“You asked why I kept at it, that’s
why. It was never enough… Then
you came along and… and it was the real thing.
A real home, a real family, real love, not a cheap substitute that
could never…”

“…”

“…”

“So what changed?
Is it just the MoMA opening reminding you or…”

“No.
And yes, in a way. The
opening sort of opened my eyes to it.
It’s happened again. I
had a home and family once. I felt safe and I felt loved, and then it
was gone. Forever, never to return.
So I had stealing to fill that void, however imperfectly. It’s
what I did, and it worked for a while… Now that’s gone too, just as
permanently. I mean, even if I
did go back, it wouldn’t be the same.”

“You said you had the real thing now.
So why care about that? You admit it’s no substitute, you admit
it won’t ever fill the void, you said what we had—”

“IS TOO FRAGILE!” she screeched. “It was good for a while, but now, all of a sudden, it seems
so… fragile.”

She whispered the last word quietly, and neither spoke as the car crossed
the borders of the Wayne property and raced through the alpha-delta sensors.

“I know a ring or a piece of paper won’t make it any less fragile,”
Selina said finally, “no more than a painting would.”

He grunted.

“And no more than pummeling your ten-thousandth thug will, so don’t be so
smug, Jackass.”

Bruce said nothing as the Batmobile
crossed the last omega sensor and pulled to a stop in the cave.
He was still in a fog. Comparing her impulse to steal with the
necessity of his mission was, was, beyond anything he could… anything he
could begin to…

But
at the same time, she was hurting so badly.
He couldn’t just dismiss it.
He turned, slowly, without releasing the doors.

“We’re home,” he graveled.

The theatres let out.
Tom Blake, a.k.a. would-be-fake-criminal-Batman, found that he could
not get a cab. He walked…
disheartened… back to his lair.
He first noted the telltale marks of Batmobile tread on the street about a
block from the day spa, and, like any experienced tracker, he proceeded with
caution.

He satisfied himself that there was no
residual bat-presence. He
checked that there were no police, which trailed behind the true
bat-predator like scavengers.
There was nothing left but the yellow tape that sealed the doors to the day
spa, but that was small consolation.
The lair was raided; Hugo and the cat-nymphs were captured or in
hiding; the operation was a failure.
Blake sank down onto the step at the front door to the spa.
The too-long and spiky ears of the cowl felt wrong as he let his
weary head flop into his hands.

This is what came of giving up his magic cape.

“BELOVED! At last, I’ve found you!” a
joyous voice cried across the street.
Blake looked up to see a trim figure in white racing up to him, her
arms outstretched. “Beloved!”
she gushed anew as soon as she reached him, “Fear not, I have returned in
this, your darkest hour. You
will be again the man that you were!”

Blake felt his head rise a touch at
these encouraging words.

“It is not your fault, my Beloved, you
fell in with inferior beings and they pulled you down to their level. They contaminated you with their low ways and low standards.
But you will be great again, Beloved, for I am here now to pull you
up once more, as only I can, to save you from the degradation of those who
were never worthy to bask in your light.”

“You have a very interesting way of
talking,” Bat-Blake started to say, but he got no further than “Y-” when
Talia flung herself down in front of him and began weeping on his knee.

“Um-r-uh,” he said, tentatively.

She looked up in response to these tender entreaties, through a blur of
tears, into that masked face she loved so dearly, and she explained—now
that, at last, he was ready to understand—she would explain how it was the
witchery of that disgusting cat that brought him to such ruin.

“Cats are such vile, despicable creatures, it is no wonder anyone so low
as to choose one for their avatar must be depraved beyond reason—”